1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to riding mowers for use on golf courses and other large grounds, and more particularly relates to riding mowers having a latch mechanism which greatly facilitates attaching and detaching cutting heads from the mower.
2. Discussion
The assignee of the present invention manufacturers and sells riding mowers for turf maintenance. More particularly, the assignee sells both electrically and hydraulically operated mowers for turf maintenance. An example of the all-electric riding greens mower is described in detail in the commonly-assigned patents U.S. Pat. No. 5,406,778, issued Apr. 18, 1995; U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,037, issued Jul. 30, 1996; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,445, issued Sep. 10, 1996, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Whether using an electrically or hydraulically operated mower, turf mowers of the type used on golf courses or other large grounds typically require frequent maintenance. This frequent maintenance periodically necessitates the removal of the cutting heads from the mower to facilitate access to the various parts of the cutting head so that maintenance, repair, and replacement of parts may be more easily performed.
In a typical gang mower, the cutting head attaches to the mower through a pull frame assembly. The pull frame assembly includes a vertically oriented spindle or kingpin inserted into a vertical cylinder attached to the frame of the mower by a lift arm. The spindle is held in place by a linchpin inserted through the spindle on the opposite side of the vertical cylinder to maintain attachment to the vertical cylinder. The pull frame also attaches to the cutting head by bolting to each end of a crossrod which traverses the frame of the cutting head.
In a typical three cutting head mower configuration, two cutting heads are placed in front of the front wheels of the mower, and a third cutting head is placed beneath the operator between the front wheels and the rear wheel of the mower. The center cutting head usually presents the most difficulties of the three cutting heads with respect to removal. The mower frame is relatively close to the ground so that there is insufficient clearance to easily remove the spindle of the pull frame from the vertical cylinder. In such a configuration, the operator must first detach the cutting head from the pull frame by removing shoulder bolts which attach the pull frame to the cutting head via the crossrod.
To unbolt the cutting head, the operator must reach beneath the mower in order to get into a suitable position for removing the shoulder bolts. The operator then removes the shoulder bolts from the cutting head to detach the pull frame from the cutting head. After the shoulder bolts have been removed, the operator then gets onto the mower, starts the engine, raises the lift arm to clear the pull frame from the cutting head, and backs the mower up slightly so that the cutting head can be removed from beneath the mower.
While this operation may seem relatively straight-forward, the complexity and compactness of the mower and the attached cutting head significantly complicate this operation. A given cutting head may have several accessories, such as rotary brushes, groomer assemblies, counterweights, front roller scrapers, grooved rollers, and vertical cutters. These accessories may not only impair access to the shoulder bolts, these accessories may completely restrict access to the shoulder bolts without the removal of one or several of these accessories. This increases significantly the operator time required to remove the shoulder bolts so that the cutting head may be removed from the mower. The above difficulties are not easily resolved due to the very limited space available for inserting any additional parts to facilitate installation and removal of the cutting head.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a release mechanism to facilitate installation and removal of the cutting head onto and from the mower.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a release mechanism for facilitating installation and removal of the cutting head onto and from the mower which requires a minimum of space and enables the use of any of a number of various attachments on the cutting head.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a release mechanism for facilitating installation and removal of a cutting head onto and from a mower where the release mechanism is advantageously located between vertical plates of the pull frame and cutting head.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a release mechanism having two operative positions, where one operative position enables installation and removal of the cutting head and the other operative position locks the cutting head onto the pull frame.